A Chinese mainland student aboard the train that went off the rails last Friday in Taiwan said there were three sudden brakes before the train came to a halt.

"At first, we thought it's an emergency stop due to power failure which led to the derailment of some of the train's carriages," the unidentified student, who was injured in the crash, told China Media Group (CMG) in a phone interview.

"We didn't realize how bad the situation is and we had no idea what actually happened," he noted, adding "We waited for around 20 minutes for rescue because the communications system in the train was damaged."

The student was standing in the first carriage, the one thought to have sustained the least damage during the accident.

The worst railway accident in the region's history killed at least 50 people and injured 200 others. The train slammed into a flatbed lorry that had slid down a slope and settled onto the tracks close to the mouth of a tunnel in Hualien County.

The student said his jaw hit a seat as the train was trying to stop. "I was the only one who got injured in the first carriage," he said.